(Note: Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet was the working title. The book will be published under the name Zeus is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure.)

So it’s happened.

Big news.

Epic, one might even say.

That’s right, the Seahawks actually won the Superbowl! Er, wait, that’s not it. (I mean, they DID win, but that’s not the news.) Sorry, it’s early Saturday and I haven’t yet finished my coffee. One sec.

It would be accurate to say that I’m a wee bit excited about this. Yes, I do have two sci-fi novels out there right now as ebooks, but Murdering Zeus will be my first non-self published novel and will be published in both paper and electronic formats. Don’t get me wrong, self-publishing can be a great way to go–there are a great many fantastic self-published authors out there–but it’s long been a goal of mine to get a publisher interested enough in a novel I’ve written to say, “Hey, this is great! Let us put it out there!” If you’ll permit me a little pride, it’s an incredible feeling.

“That’s great, Mike, really. But quit blubbering and tell us what the novel’s about, huh?”

Impatient folk, aren’t you?

Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet is a comedic contemporary fantasy set in a version of our world where reality TV heroes slay actual monsters and the Greek gods have their own casinos, media empires, and Twitter feeds.

Yet the gods have only recently returned to our world. You see, Zeus (king of the Greek/Olympian gods, for those not in the know) ordered the Olympian gods to go into hiding 3,000 years ago. Everyone knows that you don’t argue with Zeus unless you want a lightning bolt where the sun don’t shine. Yet it seems that wasn’t enough to stop someone from assassinating him nine months ago, and with Zeus dead, his order fell by the wayside. The Olympians are back! (Except, obviously, for Zeus.) And if you thought mortal celebrities had big egos, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

This is not to say that killing an immortal is commonplace in this story; it’s got the entire pantheon quite consternated. Someone out there can KILL them? As in dead? Forever? Heck, even the Titans only got locked up in Tartarus after the Olympian gods overthrew them, and those bastards were dangerous! It’s got them so disturbed that they’ve all decided en masse to just, well, kind of ignore the question of exactly who ganked him. Why poke about in matters that might get them killed, too? Besides, now they can strut their stuff openly among the mortals again, and who doesn’t love attention?

I won’t go into too many details about the actual plot just yet, but I will say that I had a blast writing this book. I got to throw the full force of my sense of humor into the voice (my sci-fi novels are obviously more serious), and I’ve always been fascinated with Greek mythology. I can’t wait to share this book with all of you.

I don’t yet know quite when it will come out, but sometime in 2014, certainly. Booktrope is a new publisher (but so far quite successful–they’ve been written up in Forbes), working on a different publishing model to adapt to the evolution of the publishing industry. That means a shorter time to publication than the year or more that older publishers can take. But we’ve still got to do some editing, cover design, layout, etc. I’m excited to get going on it all, and I look forward to being able to show you the cover once it’s available.

In the meantime, why not follow one of the book’s characters on Twitter? Thalia is one of the nine Muses, and responsible for musing comedy, poems about farming, and science fiction. Yes, science fiction. What, did you think the Muses just ignored the modern genres?

I leave you now with a quote from Thalia, who tends to babble. A lot:

“I’m not Artemis here, you know! I can only talk to animals, I don’t have some special stupid slavery-power over them! You think training a cat is bad, try getting a bird to do what you want it to do! There’s a reason ‘flighty’ means what it means! And for that matter, we’re dealing with jewelry here! Birds do not like carrying jewelry for anyone! Tolkien understood that; why can’t you? Stay here!”

Keep an eye out on this blog, my Twitter feed, or my Facebook page for more info on Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet! Further bulletins as events warrant. (3/13/14 edit: Like this one and this one about the origins and writing of the book…)

I picked up On the Matter of the Red Hand immediately (and I do mean immediately) after loving another novella by J.M. Guillen called The Herald of Autumn. I was not disappointed.

The novella, written in first person, is narrated by Thom, a detective known as a judicar. Guided by an alchemical serum that gives prophetic visions and waking nightmares, Thom must inject himself into the search for the sister of a dangerous guild master, knowing that he may not emerge alive.

The novella is as much about Thom’s investigation as it is about Thom himself. Time is taken to show the man behind the badge (or the stave, in his case); his thoughts, his means for dealing with the burdens of his position, and his inner conflict with the serum that both aids him and disturbs him. Guillen’s portrayal has a distinctive voice that I found very enjoyable.

The novella paints an intriguing pre-industrial setting filled with alchemy, guilds, and danger. One of the details I enjoyed most about this book was the concept of each judicar having as a partner a trained raven. Guillen hints at a richer background in his setting (such as a rare firearm that seems to be a product of the setting’s past). I wanted to know more.

In fact, wanting more is the main reason I nearly rated this book 4 stars instead of 5; the end left something unresolved that I wanted to know more of. I came to discover that the novella is intended to lead into a larger series, which I’m certainly looking forward to. My only complaint here would be that Thom himself seems to sense that it was time for the novella to end, as he finds a greater sense of closure in certain events than I would have in the same situation. If Goodreads allowed me to rate it 4.5 stars, I would, but as that’s not possible, I’m rounding up.

Find yourself caught between a centuries-long struggle between spirits of the old world and the new, witness beings of faerie who can make a story real with their powers of Telling, and risk nightmares given form by what lurks in the darkness, just read this book!

This is a fantastic novella. I’m drawn to tales of old-world faeries (the kind of creatures that will steal 2 decades of your life with longing, or strip the flesh from your bones if offended), and The Herald of Autumn doesn’t disappoint. Guillen crafts his writing with an amazing, poetic care that not only makes the world palpable but paints in marvelous fashion the concepts behind it: stones that have never known flight, singing in joy as they’re flung from a sling; the power of a true name; and the titular Herald of Autumn himself. Descriptions of dark things encountered (both real and sent as nightmares into the main character’s mind) are both imaginative and frightening: “I saw a capering, giggling boy in the shadows, with extra joints in his fingers. They bent backwards, serpentine. He would tickle sleeping children until they bled…” Twisted.

Within 5 minutes of finishing it, I had already told three friends to tell them to pick it up as soon as I could, and that’s honestly not something I’ve ever done before. My only complaint–and I mean this in the best way–is that it’s just a novella and not a full-length novel. Don’t get me wrong, it’s the perfect length for the story it tells, I was just sorry to see it end!

I’ve never been big on writing short stories. It’s not a completely alien concept, of course. I’ve published a few. “Finding Victor,” even won an award. But if an idea excites me enough to get me writing, it’s usually something I want to take some time to develop, and that usually means novel-length.

So I suppose it’s fitting that three of the short stories I’ve written had a similar theme that eventually did lead me to turn them into an entire novel. That novel, which I’ve mentioned here before, became Murdering Zeus for Fun and Prophet, a comedic contemporary fantasy set in our modern world where reality TV heroes slay actual monsters and gods have their own Twitter feeds. (It’s as yet unpublished, but I’m looking to change that soon via independent publishing.) As for the stories that led to it, I’ve decided to release them together in a free ebook titled Mythed Connections: A Short Story Collection of Classical Myth in the Modern World.

It’s ironic, perhaps, that my shortest book has the longest title.

Of the three stories in Mythed Connections, two have been published before, and one is newly released for this collection. All three share in some way the underlying concept and (to varying extents) the comedic bent of Murdering Zeus: Greek gods and their fellows are still out there, hiding in our forests, hanging out in Hollywood, and getting angry at Al Gore for inventing the Internet. But while Murdering Zeus explores what happens when Zeus is murdered and they make themselves known to the world, Mythed Connections has them still in hiding, for as we all surely know, Zeus commanded them all to withdraw from the mortal world some 3,000 years ago.

You could consider it a prequel. As the foreword states, certain elements and characters from the stories did make their way into Murdering Zeus, after all. Some more than others. And you should probably take anything Hermes says with a grain (or a bag) of salt. Here’s a preview of what you’ll see in this collection, but hey, it’s free, and in multiple formats! Why not grab the whole thing?

“The Atheist and the Ferryman”

An atheist named Marcus learns the hard way that just because the old man living a hovel along a river that flows through a giant cavern in his basement is crazy, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he’s not telling the truth about being the ferryman to the land of the dead.

“Snipe Hunt”

Janette’s older brothers have ditched her in the woods. Again. But when Hermes takes a liking to her, vengeance is hers.

“Playing with Hubris”

A young man a café finds himself stalked by a man who claims to be the god Apollo, who says he wants to help him, and who won’t take no for an answer

It should appear on Barnes & Noble’s website, as well as iTunes, but that takes a few more days. It’ll still be free then, though. So enjoy! And watch this blog for more information about Murdering Zeus for Fun and Profit…

I saw it Saturday night, and I have to say any anxiety I had about Guillermo del Toro directing the upcoming Peter Jackson-produced Hobbit film (and its bridge-to-LOTR sequel) is now completely squashed. Okay, so I didn’t have that much anxiety to start with; the man seemed pretty darned competent already, but then he DID direct Blade 2. (My problem with those movies primarily stems from the source material itself, though. The vampires in Blade’s world are laughably weak.)

There are scores of Hellboy 2 reviews all across the Net, so I won’t bother with one here other than to say that the extent to which del Toro is willing to commit himself to a fantasy world is extraordinary. This is–in spirit, at least–the faerie world of Gaelic legend, where faeries are as like to rip the flesh from your bones as they are to dance for you*. If you’ve read any reviews, you’ve heard about it before: the savage tooth faeries, the mind-blowing troll market, and the ruthlessly evil (yet somewhat sympathetic) elf prince who’ll have the geekier folk in the audience thinking “Hey, a bladesinger! …With a spear.” It’s a wonderful movie, provided there’s still a part of you that’s willing to embrace the fantastic.

~~Quick spoiler alert~~ Was anyone else pleasantly surprised that the confrontation with the tentacular forest elemental–which, again, anyone who’s seen the trailers knew was coming–happened in the middle of the movie rather than the climax? Along the same lines, was anyone rather irked at the prince for forcing it, the last wonder of its kind, into a battle rather than keeping it safe and perhaps finding a way to spawn more of its kind? This guy’s supposed to be fighting humanity to safe such things, yet he’s immediately willing to sacrifice something so rare. Slight flaw in character writing, or the writing of a flawed character?~~End spoilers~~

*“What, you learn about faeries from that Walt Disney guy? Want I should wear a tutu and prance around with some bloody unicorn or something? (Unicorns! Sanctimonious bastards, don’t you get me started on them!) That Disney-man has spread so many lies about us Faerie-types that I’ve ‘alf a mind to get a group of spriggans together and bite ‘is arms off!”–-Excerpt from “Squirrel!” (by Michael G. Munz, published 2003)